Write civil services exam in your mother tongue

Updated on: Tuesday, February 16, 2010

The Vocational Guidance wing of Ernakulam employment exchange has published a bulletin with information in Malayalam about the civil services examination.

How many aspiring candidates know that they can write their preliminary and main examinations in their mother tongue including Malayalam?

They can appear for interview too in these languages. Present day youth and their parents have a liking for engineering and medical courses. With the same effort and timely preparation they too can reap rich harvest in civil services exam, says Benny Mathew, Junior Employment Officer.

The main reason for north Indians performing well in civil services is the fact that they can try their luck in Hindi, says the bulletin, titled ‘Employment Information Bulletin'. Keralites lag behind north Indian students in this regard.

Reference books

Even though a candidate can write and appear for interview in his/her mother tongue, it has to be kept in mind that majority of the reference books are in English. The bulletin refers to the achievement of S. Aswathy, a Keralite who chose Malayalam as optional and got third rank in 2003.

The preparations for civil services can begin from the high school days.

Aspirants can take part in extra-curricular activities like elocution, debate, quiz, and essay writing. They have to be well-versed in general knowledge and current affairs. The NCERT books of class X-XII can give basics information on India and its people. Daily reading of English newspapers is a must.

The editorials of newspapers can help them a lot. Preparing notes of subjects read and keeping them in a file are a good practice. The proper selection of optional subjects plays a key role in achieving success. These need not be the subjects studied by the students during their college days.

The 40 page bulletin in A4 size has details relating to the examination pattern interview, selection of optional subjects, list of subjects which can be chosen for the preliminary and final examinations, eligibility criteria like age, qualification, chances in other subordinate services and list of coaching centres all over India including Kerala.

Better facilities

The civil service academy at Thiruvananthapuram offers a video conferencing facility for students to converse with IAS and IPS officials.

“The VG wing of employment exchange plans to bring out more publications for the benefit of different job aspirants.

The financial crunch and bureaucratic hurdles are delaying the publication. If the government sanctions small fund or allow us to find sponsors, the department can bring out more journals for the benefit of job seekers,” adds Benny Mathew.

Only 100 copies of the bulletin were printed and the publication is not available for sale right now. The department wants to circulate the bulletin in schools, colleges and vocational institutions once more copies are ready.

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